


A Call From Below

by holhorsinaround



Category: World of Warcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-06 06:10:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17340032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holhorsinaround/pseuds/holhorsinaround
Summary: Some wrongs hurt to make right, especially when you were the one who had done the hurting.





	A Call From Below

Leora quietly excused herself, smiling down at him from where she sat as they said their goodnights, then skipped back down below deck. He promised he’d go back down to rest soon, but… once she was out of sight, he turned back to the ocean and leaned down on the railing, eyes closing as the waves crashed around the boat.

Even as truthful as he had been with Leora, it wasn’t that Bethekk was pushing him toward something different. He didn’t feel Bethekk’s call at all with this; instead, once again, the ocean itself and all its majesty was calling to him.

He could feel Bethekk imploring him, encouraging him to dive back into his original path through his druidism. He did not know who it was under the ocean who called to him, and he did not know if his mother had ever given it a name. She had revered it, finding strength in the storms that came off the sea, in the gentleness of the waves lapping at the shore. Even in the rivers of their home, that strength was found, and Beryl had swayed and danced and mixed shamanism with druidism, been revered by the whole of the tribe even if his father was less than pleased.

Even at a young age, Alar had found the power of the ocean– of the water and the rain, the streams, the frenzy of hurricanes coming into the island– it dwelled deep within him, mobile under his fingertips.

Leora and Kaladin called her the Tidemother, but in his heart he knew that wasn’t right, that wasn’t who called to him. Maybe, in some ways, the Tidemother was the same as this being that reached out for him.

Bethekk had never led him astray, in all the years he had found her. He found himself tired, now, though, staring out at the water, fingers touching to the small claw he wore around his neck.

“Mother, Bethekk, what is it you want me to do,” he murmured, not quite a question but not quite a statement.

It hadn’t been Bethekk, and it hadn’t been this calling from under the ocean, who had suggested him to return to the Grove. It had been the way he walked through Elwynn Forest just weeks before, the grass at the ankles of his boots twining in toward him, wrapping with him with a gentle touch before letting him continue to step. It had been with the sway of the trees at the Exodar, their gently blossomed branches reaching out, reaching down to his shoulders and tousling his hair.

The way the breeze brought on the scent of dirt everywhere he went. He’d woken up too many times recently, especially since their job in the Exodar, where he found himself outside, propped against a tree, laying in the grass, mud under his fingernails and splotching his clothing, his skin.

And most recently, the conjuration of the earth’s blessing under his fingertips and against his wound, stopping the bleeding from the gunshot mid-fight in a split second decision out of desperation. Cool under his fingertips, but not cold. Rejuvinating, but not turning him away this time. Not like every other time.

It had frightened him at first, simply because he didn’t know what to expect with it, what it meant. Now he knew, and that frightened him too, but in different ways.

It had been many years since the world around him had reached for him, had brought an ache into his stomach and his chest and his heart. The longing to return to where his path started had grown, and he kept catching himself thinking, “what if?”

What if… he hadn’t been removed from his tribe at the small, unknowing age of eight for reasons that weren’t his fault? What if his mother had stood up for him, had been the mother he needed then, hadn’t let his father send him away only to protect the chieftain’s crimes toward him?

What if, even, under Matazu’s care in Orgrimmar, he had spent his time instead learning with her, pursuing the arts of rebirth and restoration of the world instead of committing the petty crimes of theft, of public brawling at age twelve with adults who knew better than to beat a kid?

And what if he’d just went back, five years after that even, what if he’d just went back to Matazu, apologized for the awful things he had said and done, apologized for leaving, for instead choosing to use Bethekk’s gift for crime instead (even if Bethekk had left her blessing with him after all he did, as though she neither approved nor disapproved, as if she’d turned a blind eye)?

Some wrongs hurt to make right, especially when you were the one who had done the hurting.

He looked down to the wood of the boat, gloved fingers still pressing in against it; he could feel it. The hum, the beat, the drumming within the wood itself. He began fiddling his gloves off, pressing them into a pocket. His bare hands pressed in against the grain before his left raised to his neck, touching across the claw and the pendant on their chains. The disguise fell away, slow and resolute in the faint moonlight, until he stood alone on the ship in his given form, bangs falling into his eyes.

His fingers wrapped around the claw and squeezed, his breath shaking as, ever so faintly, the tendrils of little, green vines began to coil up around his fingers, around the thin silver chains and against his collar, against the wood of the boat. With the water lapping rhythmically under him, the breeze against his face, and the delicate but strong sprouts under his fingers, he felt the first sense of peace he had felt since arriving at the Exodar, since arriving to Stormwind, and since the end of his campaign in Dalaran.

He willed the disguise back before any of the ship’s crew– or worse, any of the Adventurers’– found him, then began making his way below deck and to bed. Once more, he would find solitude in the smallest room off to the side, an unused broom closet that he could curl up in, be by himself and with himself until the rest of the voyage was complete.

**Author's Note:**

> Another small piece from the latter half of 2018 post events during a guild campaign. The calling of a new Loa runs deep...


End file.
